


hey wolf, there's lions in here (hey wolf, just see there's no fear)

by tokyometropolis (mesohorany)



Category: WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Disorder, Depressive Episode, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I cried the whole time I wrote this, M/M, Manic Episode, Sander is so sad and Robbe is a legitimate angel, Sander's perspective cause of course I needed to get in his head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesohorany/pseuds/tokyometropolis
Summary: Sander's all chaos and Robbe's so calm and Sander doesn't know how to handle it. AKA Sander's perspective when Robbe finds him in the midst of Chernobyl fallout.
Relationships: Sander Driesen/Robbe IJzermans
Comments: 14
Kudos: 305





	hey wolf, there's lions in here (hey wolf, just see there's no fear)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a frenzy and it took me about thirty minutes so sorry if it's shit. I have a ton of emotions about Monday still and there might be more where this came from but I had to get this out. Disclaimer: I do not have bipolar disorder and I do not claim to be an expert on how Sander was feeling. 
> 
> Title from "Run Run Blood" by Phantogram. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy. <3

When he’s like this sleep doesn’t come, not when he’s at that dangerous cusp between mountain and valley, when he has one foot in blurry paradise and the other in darkness. When Robbe comes to him, finds him at the place he calls safe, he’s frantic: desperate for Robbe to understand him and is hot-shamed for the chaotic state he’s in at once. He doesn’t want Robbe to see, doesn’t want him to know how dire things can get when his mind takes control of him, and yet he’s never craved opening to someone more. The rational part of him that still lives and thrives beneath layers of paranoia and fear whispers to him: _if anyone can love you, it’s him. If not him, no one._

And yet he still remembers how Robbe pushed him away, still dwells on the rejection his disobedient brain magnifies by thousands, reinforcing the mantra he’s had committed to memory for years, _you’re unlovable you’re not worthy you’re NOTHING._

The sleeping bag in the corner of the room is unused. All he does is manifest his pain to paper, bleed the things he’s nearly bit his tongue off trying to stop screaming out loud to the one his soul knows: _Robbe._ Because it’s the only way he knows how to breathe he draws him in color, draws him in shades of black and gray and white, his face, his hands, that medallion gilded and stark around his neck. He sketches them together, scratches black and black and black across paper that’s so white it robs his vision. When he’s like this he feels like an unfinished painting, random scarred slashes of color across canvas, no order. Normally that’s the way he likes it, no rules, only spontaneity, all the way or no way, but when he can’t find lines and edges to define himself he is lost.

 _Robbe_ is those lines and edges. _Robbe_ is the borders that keep him from coloring too far outside the lines. Robbe is stability; it’s just that Sander’s ability to upset the balance is as volatile and shattering as an earthquake.

“Get the fuck out,” he says when Robbe edges into the room, but across his mind sprints _never leave me again_. The entire room is how Sander feels about Robbe and every time he is vulnerable with someone they leave him in the dark and what must this look like, all of his artistic renderings of Robbe’s face, how obsessive, how intense? All Sander knows is shame.

“No,” says Robbe, in that soft tranquil murmur of a voice that Sander loves so, and then he says “I’m not leaving,” and then he says it again

And again

And again.

Through hazes and blurs Sander watches Robbe kneel beside him, feels his hand warm on Sander’s skin, mouth against Sander’s chapped knuckles. He’s aware that he hasn’t showered in days.

Sander says, “I’m toxic. Everything I touch is destroyed.”

Robbe says, “You touched me and I’ve never felt anything like that. I love you.”

But Robbe has said it and said it and then when Sander’s episode forced him to unmask the truth he ran and Sander wants to believe him but he can’t. But right now, right now, after he’s seen the worst side that Sander could possibly show him, Robbe isn’t moving, and his light-luminous eyes are honest, his face open and sure when he says _look at me, Sander, look at me._ Sander’s name on Robbe’s tongue adopts the hushed quality of a reverent prayer and Sander never needs Robbe to call him _baby_ because that voice murmuring the sound of his own name is endearment enough. _  
_

When Robbe pulls Sander to his feet, taking charge for them at last, Sander follows. When Robbe instructs him that they will, from this second onward, be living their lives minute by minute, Sander agrees. And when Robbe kisses him, surprisingly big hands framing Sander’s ashen cheeks, the emotion radiating from his entire being is so sweet and genuine that Sander can do nothing but dissolve in anguish wrapped in Robbe’s arms, aqueous and ruined, the center of him bared for Robbe to see.

Robbe sees. He sees everything. And instead of running, instead of abandoning Sander to his ugly inner disarray, all he says is:

“I’m so glad I found you.”

*

Somehow Robbe gets him home, but he finds that when they cross the threshold to Robbe’s flat, he doesn’t remember the trip. Automatically Sander kicks off his shoes by the door and stands waiting for Robbe to lead him and when he does it’s straight into the bedroom, the path they hunt quiet and swift. Intermittent tears still drip hotly down Sander’s cheeks but Robbe’s hand is warm and sure at the flat of his back and if that’s the only thing tethering him to the earth then it will do: Robbe has proved that he is strong enough for them both.

“Sander,” says Robbe gently, when they’ve reached his room, shut themselves in. “What do you need?”

Sander looks at him, blinks. No one ever asks him that, not in so straightforward of a manner. It takes him a while to process.

“I,” he says after a moment, and his voice is a wreck. “I really want to shower.”

“Okay,” says Robbe. He leans up to him, kisses gently at the side of his mouth, sudden salt of Sander’s tears on his tastebuds. “Do you want me to come?”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Sander fervently, because the thought of Robbe being out of sight for even one second right now is too much, and he’s already at war with the precipice at every breath.

Robbe smiles and leans his forehead into Sander’s neck.

“Okay.”

Tenderly he pulls him into the bathroom, where he runs the shower until it’s the perfect kind of furious hot, and then for the second time they’re under the water together and Sander is crying for how different it is from last time. Robbe holds his face in his hands like he’s sacred, like the worst thing in the world would be to handle him with anything but utmost care, and when Sander thinks about that he sobs even harder.

“I’m sorry I ruin everything,” he chokes into Robbe’s neck, and when Robbe pulls back to force eye contact Sander sees that he’s crying too.

“Sander,” he says, and there is his name again, made into song by the reverence of Robbe’s tone, so different from what he’s accustomed to. “You don’t ruin anything. I came after you that night, you know.”

Sander feels his chest seize. “You - what?”

“I came after you,” says Robbe, and he’s so beautiful when he cries and Sander just wants to paint him exactly like this, vulnerable and frenzied and _honest_. “I found you, but Britt stopped me before I could get to you. I was screaming your name - “

_[there is rain and cold and rain and cold and someone is wrapping a shield around his shoulders and the euphoria that crashed into paranoia that crashed into nothingness is fading and there is only rain and cold and_

_in the background, “SANDER!”_

_and something in his chest stirs but his mother is touching his face and the paramedics are pushing him back into the ambulance and Britt is there no now she’s gone and_

_“SANDER!”_

_he wants to look up but he doesn’t know if he is dreaming and then Britt is back beside him and the doors are closing and that voice the one he trusts is silenced]_

“I heard you,” says Sander slowly. “I heard you, but I didn’t realize it was you until it was too late. I couldn’t - when I’m like that I can’t - nothing _works_.”

Robbe kisses his mouth and their tears mingle with the shower water and Sander is holding on to everything that makes him feel anything at all.

“Sander, I love you,” says Robbe, and Sander can hear in his voice that he’s trying to keep it together but he can’t. “You scared me so fucking much. She told me you - she said you had been manic the whole time. She said that you - that you didn’t love me. So I thought that meant it wasn’t real.”

For the first time in days something more powerful than darkness rises volcanic and ferocious in Sander’s chest.

“Britt told you I don’t love you?”

“Yes,” says Robbe, and Sander can feel him trembling. “I know it’s not true now. But I didn’t know what to think, I was scared, and that’s the only reason I - said what I said. I never, ever meant it.”

And just like that, clear as a Caribbean Sea, everything, everything makes sense; Sander understands the crucial part of the story he’d been missing. Robbe didn’t run away. Britt chased him.

“Robbe,” says Sander, and if it destroys him he’s going to ride this last positive wave of emotion until he can’t anymore because Robbe needs to know, Sander has to tell him. “I love you more than anything in this entire universe, in any universe, ever. And there will never be a day that that won’t be true.”

And this time when he collapses against Robbe’s chest and starts to sob anew it’s not for grief. It’s for relief.

*

Even when the brunt of the depressive wave is blunted by being with Robbe, sleep eludes him, a whim he can only chase and snatch at in bits and pieces. Robbe’s bed is warm and soft but not as warm and soft as Robbe himself is against him and he’d forgotten how healing it is to be clean. He doesn’t know the time; doesn’t care to know, all he focuses on is Robbe’s fingers braiding over and over through his hair, sliding gently down his nose and over his ribs ( _you’re so skinny,_ Robbe chides, and Sander manages a tiny smile and presses at Robbe’s poleaxe collarbones and says _look who’s talking, tiny_ ), their legs entangled beneath layers of blankets. Sander wants to look at Robbe all night long but he knows Robbe won’t sleep if he doesn’t so eventually he closes his eyes and pretends. Some time later, after he’s managed to drift the deepest he’s gone for days, Robbe’s phone dings and not long after he sits up, kisses Sander’s forehead, climbs easily out of bed.

Sander’s stomach knots; before he can shut himself up he blurts:

“Are you leaving me behind?”

Robbe turns to him, chuckles. His medallion gleams at his chest.

“Not in this universe.”

Sander smiles for that, rolls his eyes.

“Where are you going, then?”

Robbe walks back over to the bed, leans over, nuzzles his nose against Sander’s own. “School. I have exams.”

Sander has fears he cannot name and he knows they’re irrational but the monster in his head is loud. “Are you coming back?”

Robbe presses his mouth so, so tenderly to Sander’s own.

“Always.”

Sander melts then, closes his eyes, and all of a sudden he is so, so tired.

“Good luck,” he whispers, and Robbe’s soft response of “thank you,” is made of gold and sweet and kindness and Sander thinks that despite it all there is no person in the world luckier than he is at this exact moment because Robbe Ijzermans is a literal angel and his heart is bigger than the world and Sander gets to call him his own.

He sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](https://luludemauryyy.tumblr.com/) if y'all wanna cry about Skam with me


End file.
